A Realistic Haul For Josh Donaldson Likely Isn’t Enough To Justify Trading Him

Jon Morosi would like to pick your brains, Jays fans! And judging by some of the answers he received, for some of you the vultures won’t be too far behind.

Let’s take a little trip through some tweets, shall we?

Question for #BlueJays fans: Do you believe Jays could trade Josh Donaldson this winter and still rank among the top three AL teams in attendance in 2018? (Toronto has led AL in attendance in back to back years.)

On #BlueJays, I’m curious about the extent to which franchise’s renaissance (since 2015) relies on continued presence of a star position player (e.g., Donaldson) or if young fan base and thriving downtown core can sustain strong attendance through rebuild.

My outside perspective: #BlueJays have one of the most engaged, knowledgeable fan bases in @MLB, and they probably realize winning the AL East will be difficult in 2018 with Stanton in New York and (possibly) Martinez in Boston.

OK, so those are some pretty good questions and comments, and it’s all stuff that’s pretty central to the Blue Jays’ experience right now. It’s going to be interesting to see where attendance goes this year, especially with the Yankees and Red Sox making the idea of the Jays being competitive for a division title as unlikely as it’s felt for a few seasons.

But where are the Jays at really? And where, specifically, are we at regarding Donaldson? Fans, as you’d expect, have some divergent ideas. This is a fairly representative one, though:

I think most Jays fans with a brain just don't wanna be stuck in between. Nobody wants to go 81-81 for the next ten years. Either add pieces around JD or trade him and build for the future.

One, having a true talent .500 team in 2018 is simply not the same as having one in 2008. The extra Wild Card spot means that a middling team doesn’t have to over-perform its expectations by too much to have a successful, winning season with a real chance at the World Series. True, backing into the playoffs isn’t ideal, and burning your best starter in the play-in game puts Wild Card teams at a serious disadvantage, but still, if you can get that shot you take it. You don’t mortgage your future for it, but who’s doing that? And that’s the other thing…

For two, yes, Josh Donaldson is an incredible player, and yes, he has significant trade value. But he’s also only got one year left on his contract. Before dreaming on the riches we think other teams are willing to lavish on the Jays in exchange for their best player, I think fans would do well — as fans should always do — to think about the other side of some of their imagined deals. I know that the Jays aren’t good enough to consider doing this, and that it doesn’t work for their roster, positionally, either, but try this in the abstract anyway: ask yourself, which Jays prospects would you give up for one year of Manny Machado?

Would you give up Vlad? (No.)

Would you give up Bo? (No.)

Would you give up Anthony Alford?

Imagine the Jays are a Machado away from really solidifying their place among the top tier of teams in the AL in terms of projected win total. Imagine Machado had a better season in 2017 than his 2.8 WAR reality — something more like the 6+ wins he was worth in the previous two years. Maaaaaybe you give up Alford.

Imagine Dalton Pompey had a strong, healthy 2017, and so the club could better afford to move a guy like Alford. And imagine that there really aren’t any alternatives out there that will only cost money, or lesser prospects. In that case, sure, maybe giving up six years of Alford for Machado makes sense. Maybe you can even go a little higher — maybe the equivalent of Dan Norris, Matt Boyd, and Jairo Labourt, with Alford taking the headline spot instead of Norris.

That’s a pretty hefty price to pay for Machado, but I could see a team in the right situation being willing to do about as much.

It’s a significant package. It’s a package that has a lot of value, both in terms of what you hope those players will be able to do on the field, and also in terms of allowing you to allocate resources elsewhere because you’ve strengthened your depth in certain areas. It’s helped your team be better in the future, no doubt.

But is losing out on receiving the equivalent of Norris-Boyd-Labourt or Alford-plus-plus (or Drabek-Wallace-d’Arnaud) really going to doom this organization to a decade of Ash- or Ricciardi-esque mediocrity? That’s an enormous stretch.

There is, of course, another familiar comparable, and that’s the R.A. Dickey deal with the Mets. That’s the deal you want to make! But there are a few things to consider on that one, too: One, the Jays were given a negotiating window with Dickey, so the deal wasn’t really for only one year of him. And while the Jays could offer a similar window to a team acquiring Donaldson, hoo boy, the optics of that would be fugly. Two, the final year of Dickey’s deal with the Mets, which the Jays traded for, saw him paid just $5 million. And the extension the Jays signed with him guaranteed him just $25 million. He was (supposed to be) an extremely beautiful, valuable piece on an extremely team-friendly deal — whereas Donaldson is projected to make over $20 million this year and will require a nine figure deal to get his name on an extension.

The Jays didn’t just pay an astronomical prospect price for Dickey’s talent alone, they paid it for his contract. A package like the Mets received is not coming the other way for Donaldson right now. Shit, even if the money was the same, seeing as dealing Syndergaard is probably one of the worst decisions any club has made in the last decade, getting a talent like that back simply isn’t realistic. And getting an upside like his back and then actually hitting on it? Even less so.

If the Jays could get talent like that for Donaldson, sure, trade him. If the Jays could get talent like that for Donaldson, fans imploring the team to punt on 2018 would have a much stronger point.

Unfortunately for them, other teams aren’t stupid.

If you’re “only” talking about the Alfords of the world being the return on Donaldson, what does anybody think that means you get back for J.A. Happ? For Marco Estrada? For Justin Smoak? Yes, you could certainly also move those guys and add some complementary pieces, or maybe even someone with a non-zero chance to be a star. But the idea of reloading and “stacking the deck for a run in 2020,” as one response to Morosi suggested, is just not realistic. At least unless you’re talking about moving a Roberto Osuna, a Marcus Stroman, an Aaron Sanchez — players who will still be under contract to the Jays in 2020 themselves.

A trade of one year of Josh Donaldson, good as he is, is not going to be the panacea that all those oddly rebuild-happy Jays fans — those who just want to turtle for a while until the bad men from Cleveland go away — seem to want to believe.

And none of this takes into account what any of this means for the budget, either. Even if they lose Donaldson at the end of 2018 for nothing, if it comes at the end of a strong season on the field, in terms of TV ratings, and at the gate, I think there’s a reasonable chance that the $20 million that was his salary will go back into 2019 payroll — or something close to it. If they move him and they fold up and attendance and revenue crater, do we believe the 2019 budget will hit the same heights? Probably not. Or what about the $26 million coming off the books for Happ or Estrada? I don’t think they’ll take payroll down to nothing, but in a deeper rebuild would we expect it to stay as high as it is now? I don’t think so. And that has a significant impact on adding talent around Vlad and Bo, too.

Are the players you get back for Donaldson worth the hit the 2019 budget will possibly take as a result? Are they worth giving up on 2018 despite having the 6th best projected WAR in an American League with five playoff spots, and paths still to make that position better?

I don’t think they are. And yet even these aren’t the correct questions to ask, because we’re not yet taking into account the fact that Donaldson could also still be moved at the trade deadline. Granted, he surely won’t fetch quite as much then as now, and his market then could be limited because of things like his health, his performance, or other teams’ lack of need. But we need to think about this too. The above questions then become this: is the difference between what you can get for Donaldson now and what you might get for him at the trade deadline worth the hit the 2019 budget will possibly take as a result? Is it worth giving up on 2018 despite having the 6th best projected WAR in an American League with five playoff spots, and paths still to make that position better?

And also: is the difference between what you can get for him now and what you might get for him at the trade deadline worth giving up the chance to sign him to an extension at some point over the next ten months? (Months during which — if you’ll permit me to get a touch too fanciful — the Jays’ ownership structure may change, which may make the team more able to comfortably do so).

Is it worth giving up all that?

Sure, it could be. If you get offered a Syndergaard-like package for him. Or if you have the chance to spin off pieces that, combined with some of your own prospects, could land you a Christian Yelich, or some other young, controllable star. You could definitely make the case for deals like that if you were the Blue Jays. But are those kinds of deals out there? All signs point to no.

So an Anthony Alford? A Dan Norris? Shit, even if it was both? In exchange for an entire season, probably a good chunk of future budget, the chance to re-sign an MVP-calibre talent, and the chance to make a deal later if need be for something less? Haaaaaaaaard passsssssss.

And so that’s why the Blue Jays aren’t trading Josh Donaldson and shouldn’t be trading Josh Donaldson. Apologies to all the rebuild-heads out there, but unfortunately we’re probably just going to have to watch the Jays actually try to have fun and successful seasons this year and next, and not fade into utter pointlessness for multiple years.

If all he can get back is a middling reliever then he is no good. I swear im the only one that sees what a bad hitter he is. Below stoeten told me that he is more valuable than cutch. If he actually is, then why the fuck cant we get more than a middling reliever? Because he sucks, people! Dump himw before he is non tendered next winter

You have to factor in the compensation draft pick that the signing team get s if/when JD signs for somebody else in the offseason. Getting Reyes from Cardinals will be somewhat offset by the draft pick they get back next year.

I believe this is the Cards’ situation: “If the team that lost the player does not receive revenue sharing and did not exceed the luxury tax the previous season, its compensatory pick will come after Competitive Balance Round B.”

This year Competitive Balance Round B ended at pick 75, so… a nice pick, but not what it once was.

You’re right that Dickey filled a need, fit the timeline better, and provided lots of value — he was underappreciated. But that doesn’t change the fact that if you were going to trade a player as good as Syndrrgaard you needed to do a lot better than an innings-eating mid-rotation starter. It was never as bad as people wanted to make it out, but that doesn’t mean it was a good trade.

I wouldn’t laugh at the idea of pursuing Harper. I mean, chances are he doesn’t come here. But it is disheartening when the Jays pull in solid revenue in a big market and yet we’ve become conditioned that the Jays are never in on the sexy free agents. I’d love it if the Jays made a full court press for one of the big names in the next class. Why not?

Probably not Harper. But why not be in on someone else in the class? These aren’t over the hill specials like most free agents. This free agent class is stacked, and I would hope the Jays would take a shot at one of them at least…

I like it, Stoeten. We should all root for the Jays to keep payroll where it was last season (or perhaps a bit higher), adding talent to the existing roster without trading away future stars (if other teams want to roll the dice on JB Woodman types, giddy up). The middle path is a fine way to go for at least two reasons. 1) you can’t bottom out completely because you’re likely stuck with contracts like Tulo’s for the foreseeable future – unless you dumbly package JD with him, just to get rid of both contracts. And a move like that should scare the shit out of everyone because those types of deals are more about finances (as with the Marlins trades) than building viable winners. And 2) there’s no guarantee, as you write above, that lowering the payroll to match a diminished audience from lowered TV and gate revenues, means it will rise later.

Let’s say the Jays signed Lorenzo Cain this offseason (this is for argument’s sake, as I doubt it will happen) and JD or another star player after 2018. Those two contracts would then be the only big money deals on the books after Martin’s and Tulo’s contracts expire. That shouldn’t pose a problem to the team’s future payroll plans at all. And, frankly, Jays fans should be pining for JD, Cain, or other stars to hit in the same lineup as Vlad Jr. and Bichette when they arrive. That’s more fun to dream on than wondering if Teoscar and others will become major league regulars. Stay good. Don’t get too old. Add some stud youngsters. Spend a fortune in the international market. I like it.

“Capital budgeting” is not an area of expertise for Andrew or commenters in this thread.

Yes, Rogers is terrible. However, even Rogers probably has executives of sufficient sophistication to understand that acceptable budgets for the Blue Jays payroll will vary year to year based on the marginal value that the marginal dollars spent (or not spent) will (or will not) contribute.

There may be a good argument for spending in 2018, but “pay too much for so so players to keep the budget at $x so that we still get to spend $x in 2020” is not it.

The middle ground makes sense as long as there is no random “Dickey/Marlins trades” out of no where like after the 2012 season. Add free agents when it makes sense to. Don’t sign any players tied to draft pick compensation unless the contract is too good to be true (unlikely in free agency). Make trades to add players who are young and blocked on other teams (Teoscar, Diaz, are examples) that might be able to provide some positive WAR for a few years. It’s not exciting, but staying within 80-85 wins every year while waiting for the next crop of talent to work their way up is not a bad way to go if done right. The Yankees did it. It’s doable. Just requires some good GM’ing.

Keep JD unless someone offers a haul. If you lose him for a comp pick (or trade him for whatever you can get at the deadline), then so be it. Don’t punt a season in which a wild card berth is possible just so you can say you got something for JD before he left.

Kind of tired of talking about this JD stuff and over analyzing each possible outcome. Make some moves, jays! Why are the giants the only team interested in mccutchen? If jays are trying to be good in 2018, they should be all over that.

Why trade a bunch of stud prospects, each with seven(!) years of control, for a year of McCutchen? Especially with the Jays where they are in relation to Boston and New York. That seems to me like the exact type of deal the Jays should avoid. You can sign free agents who only cost you money – Cain who’ll get four or five years, or bounce-back candidates who’ll only get a year or two in a market like this. The goal is to improve without mortgaging the future. I don’t do Alford for McCutchen if I’m the Jays at this stage, and the Pirates surely want more than that.

I think jays can get mccutcheon without trading alford. If they take on all his $ they can trade lesser prospects. Mccutcheon isnt worth as much as you think. If jays want to be good in 2018, he is exactly the type of player the jays should be targeting. Cain would be cool too, esp if he can replace shitty pillar in Cf

If the Jays can get McCutchen without trading Vlad, Bichette, Alford, Pearson, Jansen, or Pardinho, have at it. (Those are all players I’m dreaming on irrationally.) I’m not sure how the Pirates would sell that to their fans, though. Surely someone would outbid the Jays with a top 100 prospect of some kind.

AD, you know McCutchen has been less valuable over the last two years than Pillar, right?

Also, in what universe does it make sense to deal Jansen when you have the perfect situation setup for him to catch in AAA this year, come up later in the season, then split time with Martin in 2019, then take over the starting job in 2020 when Martin is off the books? A lot has to go right for all that to come true, but it’s a really good situation, and just throwing him into a trade now means back to square one behind the plate (McGuire and Pentecost aren’t going to be that guy).

Stoeten, Fair Enough. I worry about Martin too so you need a good backup. Although jansen is no slam dunk to be a good MLB hitter as well. Think the pirates would bite on pillar, Urena, and one of Reid Foley/Connor Greene? Thats a package I could live with and not sure if Pirates could do better. Also, give me mccutcheon seven times a week and twice on sundays over Pillar. I’m sure D is the reason Pillar has been valuable but Jays need O badly.

How do you max value for JD? Sign him. If it doesn’t work out down the line trade him. You take the chance he regresses or gets hurt. But if you feel that way then trade him now. Don’t understand the posture Shapiro Atkins take. Makes no sense. Plus it’s disheartening to hear jays can “only” afford a mid tier outfielder when we have have we have. The bosox have a stacked outfield compared to us and they are supposedly considering JD Martinez. Yet the jays lead the league in attendance. Sad. Feel bad for all us jays fans. Rogers small timers,

I agree. Donaldson seems to like it here and has probably flown under the radar (despite the MVP). We have a chance to extend him and retain a star for a fair price. If he’s smart he wants to extend now. With all the free agents coming up next year, if he gets hurt in 2018 or has an off-year at all, he will lose 30-40M.

As for the attendance question…if the Jays struggle this year, I don’t think having Donaldson here makes much of a difference in moving the turnstiles. We had Hall Of Fame calibre players like Doc and Delgado doing their thing in non-contending years and it didn’t move the needle much. I’d expect attendance to be better than the early 2000s, but it’s a team in the playoff hunt, not a star player, that seems to put butts in seats around here.

Of course, there’s the other angle that this is a “what’s cool now” city, and the energy we saw after 20 years of no playoffs is going to hard to replicate. After all, a lot of the tickets bought for 2017 were tied to 2016 playoff ticket packages.

The different is the fans think that the Jays will win next year, if you trade Donaldson the fan base would think the Jays are not trying to win in 2018. So it would hurt pre-season ticket and season ticket sales. Plus the Halladay/Delgado years you were already at the low point in attendance so it is not like you could lose ground. Trading Donaldson would cost revenue. If the Jays lose in 2018 with Donaldson you will start to see the effect in 2019 for attendance. TV ratings would be impacted quicker.

I didn’t say the Dome was packed whenever Doc started. I said there was a noticeable increase in attendance at the majority of his starts.
I went to tons of games in the early 2000s but was only a seasons ticket holder from 2006 on, so I only caught the tail end of Doc time here in terms of being at every start. I don’t know what attendance was like for his starts fort he first half of his time here.

But regardless, even if less than 20k people show up at a game, if most games only have 13k, and his starts get 19k, that’s still an increase in attendance (this is obviously just an example. I’m making up numbers, I don’t have time to go through a game by game analysis of attendance).

Also no, you’re right, the dome wasn’t packed because of Bautista, but there was definitely more interest around the Jays because of him. People who never talked to me about baseball, talked about baseball. Also, after a few years of steady decline in average attendance, (2010 marked the low point of attendance in like a decade- keep in mind Doc’s last season was 2009 and at that point, the Jays no longer had a star), after his breakout year, the team’s attendance has been steadily growing.

I’m not saying that that’s all because of Bautista, but he did generate interest in the team. Doc was the player people talked about, but when he left attendance plummeted. When there are players people are interested in watching, they will go to the game.
1 player might not change the overall attendance numbers by a lot, but they definitely do change. And when you start adding other star players, attendance doesn’t grow in a linear fashion, it grows exponetially.
Eg. if 1 star player adds 100 new fans, that doesn’t mean the next star player would also add 100 new fans (for a total off 200 new fans). chances are, they add 200 new fans (for a total of 300) because every new player gives the fanbase that might have tayed at home, even more of a reason to come watch the game.

So, in regards to my reply to the original comment, Having a star player retains interest in a team. If you trade your star player, people will care less. Especially if you do it before the season starts.

Obviously there are tons of other factors involved and I have done only the most cursory of “research” (ie. looked at a single attendance record sheet), so maybe I’m a big dumb moron that doesn’t know anything.

Well, attendance was down more 2008 to 2009 than it was from 2009 to 2010, which was the first year A.D. (after Doc). And then it returned to the 2009 levels the next season.

You’re right that star players generate interest, and of course you want to have stars on your team. It’s just that in this market, it seems that if you don’t want to be in the bottom third of the league in attendance, you better be contending.

All of this is to say is that if management makes a decision to sign or keep JD, I hope that it’s a purely baseball decision, and doesn’t factor the turnstiles that deeply into the equation. The past has shown a star on his own isn’t going to pump the gates in this market. Do what’s best to make the Jays a consistent contender (be it keep or trade Donaldson), even if it means a couple of down years, and the attendance will take care of itself.

Teddy, I’ll say this, I agree with you in all aspects. I do think keeping JD (for now) will be in the best interest for baseball in this city. I understand that that is 100% up for debate, and that’s cool. And I do hope that the Jays keep him, but only if it actually is best for the team and is a proper baseball decision (which, at this point, I believe it is)

However, attendance in 2010 was the lowest it’s ever been.
2008: 2,399,78 with an average attendance of 29,627
2009: 1,876,129 with an average attendance of 23,162
2010: 1,495,482 with an average attendance of 19,173

So yeah, I guess attendance dropped more from 2008 to 2009, than it did from 2009 to 2010, but it was already on the decline and I would argue that that has less to do with “Doc not being a draw” and more with realizing that Doc was getting older and the Jays werent going to add anything to make the team better.

I would also argue that 2009 was the breakoput year for Aaron Hill and Adam Lind, so there would have been a bunch of interest gained back from that. Not the same amount as having one of the best pitchers in baseball, and not the same as having the #1 monster at the plate that Bautista was, but still a bunch of interest in the sense that the Jays had one of the best middle of the order tandems in baseball that year.

Point is, there are tons of factors involved but having Donaldson (in my opinion) makes a lot of things better. Not just baseball wise, but also fan perception wise, and both of those things makes th Jays better in the long term.

Also, just to reiterate again (becasu this is the internet and sometimes disagreement can be taken as hostile or whatever) I agree with you almost 100% and in no way am attacking your opinion.

All good! I’ve enjoyed the discussion – just two fans talking Jays. To be honest, I’ve stuck around more for the community than the articles lately. Shame so many of the stallwarts have seemed to have moved on…wonder where they went?

Teddy a lot of competitive sites out there. Each has their own taste. I always have found that those who are either in journalism or broadcasting or some facet of sports usually succeed the most when they truly respect the fan who we must remember pays the way for the team, player, management and owner to succeed financially. But as I said to each their own. It is something I always try to emphasise to youngsters regarding their attitude in life. Why act like a dick head when you will get further ahead and more importantly feel better treating people with respect and class. Case in point I don’t see the point of ridiculing some nervous fan who might be only slightly knowledgeable about baseball but calls a talk show only to read a posting where he is mocked and scorned. Why would this new fan even be interested in getting involved with a site that does that to him.

So basically, you the difference between what you can get for JD now and what you can get for him later this year..not that much. I agree. It’s basically already too late to trade him and get the value required to make it worth it, given this team’s specific situation.

And of course there’s NO WAY you trade him last year because there was no reason to not seen legit contention going into the season….and then when it seemed we were likely also ran’s and the trade deadline approached, DOSH had been dealing with injuries and had a MEH season going..so it was a low value point.

Basically, its just one of those things….dont make it worse by doing something stupid.

Morosi’s question about the young fan base is a good one. Obviously everyone likes a winner, and that 2015 run was special, but did it create a generation of fans that will stick with the team if they struggle again next year? Many pre-2015 fans were from the WS glory years that stuck with the extended bad-medicocre Ash/JP years, but did 2015/2106 grab today’s young fans to the extent they are fans of the game or just riding the latest hype? I suspect that is something the current front office is grappling with. Personally, I have no idea if the current young fans will accept 2017 as a “down” year and come back. If the 2018 team starts like 2017, I’m not optimistic.

In a world where the Jays were such that one 6 WAR player was the difference between a good shot at winning the World Series and a great shot at winning the World Series, yeah, you trade Bichette. You might consider Guerrero. You’d ship Alford with no thought whatsoever and high five the other execs until your palms bled. And before you leap down my throat, let’s all Google “Jeff Kent”.

Unfortunately, that’s not really the Cards’ situation. I’d love for the Jays to find someone willing to overpay for one year of Josh, but yeah, it’s going to be tough.

Bright side though: if they shop him, and offers are meh, it has to be in the back of the minds of Josh and his agents that maybe a reasonable extension isn’t such a bad idea.

I think what’s in the minds of JD and his agent is that someone (in the US) will pay him six figures to buy his age 37 year, and hopefully his age 38 year (his age 39 year JD and his agent can only dream) and pay him as though it’s his age 33 year. That is the built-in stupidity of long-term contracts for free agents heading into their mid-30’s. All they need is one team to do it. Preferably in the US, in a no-tax state. I’m pretty sure that’s what’s in the ‘back of the minds of Josh and his agents” and is the only thing in the back of their minds.

Well, I’d kind of hope they’d also be able to count figures right? Sure you meant “six”?

But yeah, I’m sure that in no way is his representation even mildly concerned that a soft trade market for his 2018 services is potentially correlated with a soft dollar market for his 2019-2023 services.

Nolin is approaching 29, has sucked, and has an elbow injury. Graveman is a guy who doesn’t strike guys out and IMO is the very definition of a backof the rotation starter on a budget team. Barretto is still crazy young so it would be foolish to discount his struggles, but he struck out a huge amount in AAA which is problematic since most scouts seem to think at this point that he’s more of a 2B than a SS defensively. To me there is no way on earth that is a fair haul, and IMO it also wasn’t a fair price at the time of the deal.

I agree and I think the Jays do too which is why there are listening. If someone blows them away with an offer, by all means do the deal, but front offices are now pretty smart and understand how valuable controllable assets are. This is another part of the negative part of the legacy of Anthopolous. He left the team with so few valuable assets so fans are clamoring for trades with nobody to trade (clamoring for free agents with a team that needed to be filled via free agency). In the majors, only Stroman, Osuna, and Sanchez have a lot of value. Donaldson has a fair bit but after that…Danny Barnes?

i’d give up Bo for Machado or JD. 19 year old with a noisy swing, aggressive plate approach, and poor defense that will probably necessitate being slid a notch or two down the positional spectrum. i’d let someone else roll the dice on his hitting ability against higher level pitching.